


Blind Eyes Open

by girl_wonder



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-28
Updated: 2011-05-28
Packaged: 2017-10-19 20:43:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/205013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girl_wonder/pseuds/girl_wonder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean says "trust" sometimes like it's a new four letter word.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blind Eyes Open

Dean's the first to admit that he has trust issues a mile long. There are few things in his life that he trusts, and he knows that most of them begin with "D" and end with "ad."

He's driving the back roads from Omaha to Red Oak after visiting the church. Father Brogan said that some holy water should do the trick, given Dean a few extra bottles for the road. Dean likes priests that are willing to help out, give a little on the side to the people who help the masses. Doesn't trust them, though, any more than he trusts cops or lawyers.

Sam says he should stop being so slick with people who are just trying to help them, that he could actually answer some of their questions honestly, but Dean doesn't see why he should when he has priest's robes and a faked letter from the Vatican. Not that Sam's protests matter anyway because he'd left Sam at the library back in Red Oak so he wouldn't have to deal with him being pissy about not-quite-kind-of stealing from a church.

Just outside of Nebraska, right across the Iowa border, he thinks that he can trust his girl, though. After she coughs and dies on the shoulder of a back road, he thinks: I should have known better.

*****

When Dean was eight, his teacher had long blond hair that she wore half pinned back, so that it fell down her back. It made Dean think of the type of mom who took her kids bowling, who made them peanut butter cookies on the first day of school.

During art, when she told them to draw things they knew, he drew his family.

 _This is my dad. This is my brother._ He put his mother in, too, but without the blood because dad always said, "Don't draw attention, Dean." His dad would say things like that with weight, the same way he said, "Always steady the gun," and "Don't waste bullets."

"Who's this?" his teacher asked, bending over and Dean smelled something sweet and unfamiliar. She was wearing a silver cross on a chain, and he followed it with his eyes as it swayed. "Dean?"

"Oh," he glanced down; she was pointing at his mother. "That's my mom."

She tapped one nail on the table and said, "Why is she floating?"

At the time, Dean thought that maybe, if he was really, really good, she would want to be _his_ mom and make _him_ cookies and take _him_ to the bowling alley. "She's in heaven," he said, because his dad always said, "Say, 'she's in heaven' don't say 'she's dead.'"

His teacher knelt down and he sniffed again, taking in that sweet scent even longer. Later, when he was in bars, he'd avoid that scent on girls. He'd find women who didn't make him close his eyes with memory.

"Oh, I'm sorry, Dean. I didn't know." Her nails were pale pink and she touched his shoulder lightly.

Sometimes, when she was teaching, or during playtime, he thought that she smiled at him like he'd seen other mothers smile at their kids. Like dad said to do, he collected evidence, saw no wedding ring on her left hand, no pictures on her desk. It meant that maybe she was looking for a family, too. Everyone wanted a family, right? And his was way better than most. How many other kids got to take a knife to school in their backpacks?

"It's ok," Dean said. He leaned in and said, "Dad's taking care of it."

His teacher tightened her hand, and looked around like she knew that secrets weren't supposed to be told to everyone. "What do you mean?"

But, the bell rang and there were things that his dad said had to be done on time, and getting out to the front of the school topped the list. Dad said, "Punctuality is important, Dean," and "Don't tell other people the things I tell you." Even though Dad meant other people wouldn't understand, Dean figured that his teacher would, especially if she wanted to be his mother.

The next day, when his teacher let them out for recess, she called his back and told him to sit down in his chair. When he did, she knelt down and said, "Dean, when you came to school with a broken arm, did your dad," she stopped then, and put a hand on Dean's shoulder. Her hand was warm and he imagined that if she was his mom, his dad would come home and smile and be like the dads on tv who wore ties and took their kids fishing.

He thought that his dad would buy her a ring like the gold one with the diamond he wore next to his dogtags around his neck.

"Did your dad do that? Your arm?" she asked finally.

It had been a clean break, the doctor had told them. "Now, don't go climbing in any more trees for a while, Dean," the doctor had said. He'd put on a blue cast, and Dean's dad had shaken the man's hand, smiled a little.

"I just don't know where he gets these ideas into his head," Dean's dad had said.

"Well, he won't be the first kid this week," the doctor said.

When his teacher squeezed his shoulder lightly on the arm that had been in a cast for a month and a half, Dean thought: I can tell her. "Yeah," Dean said, softly.

It had been an accident. His dad had shown him how to do the move, how to use his shoulder to hurt someone here and here. When he tried it himself, he'd toppled over, tripped onto the garage's concrete, and there'd been white behind his eyelids and noise in his ears. Then his Dad had picked him up and put him in the front seat carefully.

"I'm so sorry, Dean," his dad had said quickly, pressing a kiss lightly on Dean's forehead.

Sam had to sit in the back and was still pouting about how never got to ride in the front. Any other day, Dean would have laughed at him, talked about how Dean was more _adult_ , so of course he got to ride in front, but right then, Dean's arm hurt really bad and he kind of wanted to cry.

When the nurse had brought him pills in a little plastic cup, Dean's dad had told him to put them in his mouth, and drink some water to help swallow them. "Like this," his dad had swallowed big, and Dean would have laughed, if his dad had been doing it as a joke.

The pills hurt going down, but they'd helped to make the other hurt go away.

The cast had been blue and his teacher had signed it with a little heart at the end of her name. Now her hand was clutching at his arms and she said, really soft, "Dean, that time that you said you got bruised playing outside, was that your dad?"

It hadn't actually been his dad's fault, Dean had been bored at the shooting range and Sammy wouldn't stop talking so he'd gone outside and tried climbing up to the roof. His foot had slipped and then his dad had been there, grabbing at his arms where the bruises had appeared later. "Don't do that, Dean," his dad had said, and it had been warm held against his father's chest like that.

Dean wasn't sure what to say and his teacher didn't really look nice any more, she looked like she was about to cry. Of all the things he thought would happen, he didn't think he'd make her _cry_.

"Maybe I should go play," Dean said, pulled out of her grasp, and went outside. He climbed to the top of the jungle gym, and stayed there even when the other kids yelled at him to come play four-square. Dean was good at four-square.

The next day, his teacher told him he had to go to the principal's office and when he got there, a middle aged woman in glasses met him there. "Hi, Dean. My name is Janet. I'm going to ask you a few questions," she said. Her smile was a little bit forced like he'd seen waitresses at diners smile.

She asked if his dad had ever hurt him. "No," Dean said.

Had his dad broken his arm? "No," Dean said.

Then the school bell rang and Dean shifted in his seat. "I have to go," he said.

"Dean, why don't you stay here?" the principal said. The principal had white hair and all the kids called her Principal DeVille and said that she killed kittens for fun.

Dean had seen kittens split open and dead by something not human. "This is what evil does," his dad had said, and spit.

"I really think that I should go," Dean said.

"Dean," his dad was in the office doorway, and behind him, Dean saw his teacher and he wondered how he had thought that she would want to be his mom when she was glaring at his dad like that.

Two quick steps and his dad knelt down in front of him, held his hands and said, "Are you in trouble?"

He couldn't have said why, maybe it was the way that his teacher was holding her lips together tightly, and crossing her arms like his dad was the worst person she'd ever seen, but later he just remembered that his eyes had gotten hot and his dad pulled him down so that he was pressed into a warm flannel shirt.

His hands kept tightening into fists on his dad's chest and the deep rumble of his dad speaking low soothed him. "It's ok. Shhhhhhhhh."

Later, his dad told My-name-is-Janet that he'd never touched his son, that his boy was probably just looking to impress his teacher, tell her what she wanted to hear. The broken arm? Dean had been trying to climb a tree in their back yard and he was so sorry that he hadn't known Dean would try something like that until he heard Dean crying.

On the ride home, Dean's dad was quiet and the only thing he ever said about it was, "Dean, you can't tell other people what we do. They aren't going to understand."

*****

The second time he ever trusted someone with his secret was after his cell phone woke him one morning. He was settling uncomfortably into life lived day to day in one place and the only thing that helped him deal with it was Cassie.

Cassie wore thongs and his button up shirts. She watched cartoons on Saturday mornings. When he'd first slept with her, she seemed like the type to get up and leave after. He'd liked that she had been the type that could have but didn't.

She let him hang around, spend his days in parks and watching TV, his nights in bars. She didn't care if he came back smelling like smoke and beer, if he came back with bruises from fighting. She didn't ask about the wads of cash he counted carefully and stashed in the bottom of his bag every night. When he came in, she never looked at him with a small frown the way some of his girlfriends had.

Instead, she'd quirk her lips, and if he walked directly into the bathroom, dropping clothes on the way, sometimes she'd come up behind him and kiss his shoulder, wrap her arms around him and slide a hand down his chest, helping him unbutton his pants when his hands stalled.

Other times, she'd take him with her to the grocery store and let him buy whipped cream. She'd drop a box of condoms on top of the lettuce and quirk an eyebrow when the clerk blushed. At night, she drank beer and watched action movies, typing on her laptop during the dialogue.

They didn't really talk, ever, even when she traced the looping, twisting scars on his calves with her fingers. Instead, they argued and laughed, had sex on every horizontal surface in her apartment, and some vertical ones. But, for all the casual greetings, the lazy mornings, the sharp tongued comments, he kind of thought that she wanted him to stick around.

So, when his cell phone went off and it had been his father telling him to come to New York, Dean thought: I can tell her. He wanted her to be the one he could come back to; he wanted the day to day life in one place if he could have _her._

Cassie yelled at him, "Get out! Get. _Out._ "

When he tried putting his hands up, she threw his clothes out the door at him, not that he'd left that many, just a change of jeans and a pair of boxer briefs he'd forgotten about. "Hey," he said, trying to placate.

"If you didn't want to be with me, why didn't you just say so?" Then she slammed the door in his face.

*****

Sometimes, Dean dreamed about Sam standing over him, gun in his hand.

"Goodbye, Dean," Sam would say.

Sometimes, the gun was loaded.

*****

When the tow truck finally shows up, Dean is leaning back against the hood of his car.

"That's a beauty," the driver says, running a hand over her hood.

"Can't trust her," Dean says, with a southern smile. "Love her like hell, though."

*****

end.


End file.
